SGOTM 11 - Fifth Element

[Dhoomstriker]

T250 (1050 AD) - T270 PPP Version 2

Initial Comments
I only plan to play about half of the turns, but I'd like to play soon, tonight if possible, so that I'll still have time tomorrow to finish off the turnset.

It seems to me that playing for 20 turns at a time is the perfect way for us to totally get off track. 10 turns at a time is even a lot, so I might stop earlier, especially if an AI forces my hand with a Demand that requires team input.


Military Unit Promotions (no change from the last PPP)
Any Naval Unit that has a Promotion will get a Combat I Promotion immediately. Almost all Naval Fights will be done on the defensive, so it makes no sense to save our Naval Promotions. Land Fights are usually chosen by us, so except for designated-defender units (like those in Cities on Zara's borders), I am fine with our current practice of delaying their Promotions until a Promotion is needed.

That said, I'll almost certainly Promote all units in the Barbs' Land Area, since the units will be shortly entering combat.


City Build Queues
Delhi: Observatory -> Confucian Missionaries when available and Buddhist Missionaries when available and Military Units

Silverado: Chariot -> Forge (finish it) -> Galleon -> other Military Units

Riverdale: Theatre (finish it) -> Courthouse (finish it) -> Military Units

Bedrock: Courthouse (finish it) -> Military Units

Wheaties: Chariot -> Confucian Missionary -> Confucian Missionary when available and Military Units

Grt Person Farm: Courthouse (finish it with a Chop) -> Military Units

Risaia: Forge (finish it) -> Military Units

Crabs: Forge (finish it with 2 Chops) -> Military Units

Three Clams: Galleon -> other Military Units

Sugar Daddy: Chariot -> Courthouse (finish it) -> Galleon -> other Military Units

Goldfish: Buddhist Monastary (finish it) -> Theatre -> Military Units

Ivory Towers: Confucian Missionary (finish it) -> Military Units

Mystic: Forge (finish it) -> Military Units


Citizen Allocations and other immediate changes for T250
Delhi: 5 Scientists -> E GRiv Irr, E + E GHRiv Mine, SE PHRiv Mine, W GIrr, W + W GIrr

Silverado: Remove the Taoist Monastary from the build queue
Silverado: Build a Chariot
Silverado: 3 Scientists -> S, SW, W + W Coast squares

Bedrock: DesStone Quarry, GH Mine, 2 Scientists -> SW PRiv Irr, SW + S GRiv Irr, W GIrr, E GIrr

Wheaties: Build a Chariot
Wheaties: W PH Mine, NW PH Mine -> SW PIrr, NE + N PIrr

Grt Person Farm: 5 Scientists -> Lake + 4 GIrr squares

Risaia: 2 Scientists -> W, NW GIrr

Crabs: 3 Scientists -> E, NE, N + N GIrr
Crabs: Take contorl of the NE + N PFor square from Risaia

Three Clams: PMarble, Scientist -> SW + S, SE + S GIrr
Three Clams: Build a Galleon and remove the Forge from the build queue, never to complete it

Sugar Daddy: Build a Chariot

Goldfish: Remove the Forge from the build queue, never to complete it

Ivory Towers: Priest, Scientist -> NW, N Coast

Mystic: DesH Mine, N Coast -> 2 Scientists


Priority Worker Actions
Get Grassland Farms created for Mystic.
Get a PlainsRiv Farm and a GH Windmill for Riverdale.
Chop one PFor into Grt Person Farm's Courthouse.
Chop two PFors into Crabs' Forge.
Get a Plains Farm up by Wheaties.
Get Farms up anywhere else that we could use them.


Barb City Wars (no change from the last PPP)
It seems that we have 3 Longbowmen, 3 Macemen, and 2 Catapults all stacked on the same square as each other on the Barb Cities' Land Area. Thanks, Irgy, for building them, and thanks, BLubz, for stacking them together safely! This stack will slowly push forward and will try to capture the northern Barb City.


Other Important Things to do, not necessarily in this order
1. Bribe Zara into a war with Mehmed as soon as their Peace treaty wears off. We may or may not get Horseback Riding in the trade deal, so I am preparing for this possibility by having our 3 Chariots being completed within the first 3 turns of the turnset.

2. Spread Confucianism to Isabella and hope that she Converts on her own.

3. Spread Confucianism to Justinian (if we want to be able to control him in a war against Isabella, he needs to have at least one Confucian City). Do so only if Isabella converts to Confucianism, otherwise save the Confucian Missionary for a ex-Barb City.

4. Ask Justinian and Isabella for small Gifts of Gold.

5. We will get a Great Person next turn in Delhi and another one in approximately 10 turns. If we get Great Scientists or Great Engineers, we'll hang onto them. Otherwise, in about 10 turns, we'll spawn a Golden Age. Preferably, I'll pause play before starting the Golden Age, so that people can give feedback such as "please delay it for 2 turns and grow in X City first, etc."

6. If Mehmed and Saladin meet, see if Saladin can be bribed into a war before their Shared Religion bonus kicks in.

7. As usual, watch for Resource Trades, Tech Trades, Changing Attitude Levels, and newly-appearing Fist ("hands full") icons.

8. A Galley costs 155 Gold to upgrade to a Galleon, so I'd rather not do so. Instead, we can build some in Sugar Daddy, Three Clams, and Silverado.

9. Unload Fast Worker 4 on the Barb City Land Area so that it can get to work on building a Fort there.

10. Beg a tiny bit of Gold from both Isabella and Justinian, to help stay out of their wars.

 

[BLubmuz]

Sorry guys, i was away all the day (just back home) and just took a quick look to the posts... i hope tomorrow will be better

Welcome back, Mitch

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I guess that I won't be playing until tomorrow, since no one has responded and the PPP is still relatively "fresh," even if it is just a rehash of the ideas already presented. However, I would like to try and play tomorrow morning, say, around 10 am my time (just under 12 hours from now).

As I said in the PPP, I don't plan to play it all in one session, which is why I'd really like to get going on the first part of it at that time.

It would help if I could get a few comments of either disapproval or approval of the PPP, so that I'll know how the team feels about the latest PPP version. Thanks.

 

[Irgy]

Looks good to me. Sorry, hadn't commented because I was intent on finding a hole in it first. Other than the rather silly one that "Other Important Things to do, not necessarily in this order" #4 and #10 seem strikingly similar.

 

[Mitchum]

Comments on PPP:

It looks like you'll have 4 Confucian Missionaries at the same time (2 from Delhi and 2 from Wheaties). Unless you're able to spread one of them before building the last one.

Mystic: Why are you not working both farms? I know that you're trying to get an even number of GPP, but I think the +3 food for growth is more important than losing a GPP in a city that will never generate a great person. I think you can stop working the mine and coast square and hire a total of 2 additional scientists (not 3 additional as planned).

I think you can go ahead and play the first 10 turns tonight if you're still awake...

 

[Dhoomstriker]

It looks like you'll have 4 Confucian Missionaries at the same time (2 from Delhi and 2 from Wheaties). Unless you're able to spread one of them before building the last one.

I can't be sure of the timing of spreading them, so I will change the text to read "when available" and will otherwise build partially-completed Military Units.

Mystic: Why are you not working both farms? I know that you're trying to get an even number of GPP, but I think the +3 food for growth is more important than losing a GPP in a city that will never generate a great person.

Okay, that's a fair enough point. I'll change it.

 

[BLubmuz]

We already discussed the guidelines, so your plan seems OK to me, with the few variations suggested by Mitch.

Go on, 20 days to go!

BTW, this mornig CFC was dead.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Okay, I will play, but don't hold your breath. I'm going to spend a lot of time on each turn, just to check every little detail, as I don't have much of a turn-by-turn plan beyond the first turn. So, rather than sitting here refreshing the thread, come back in about 4 hours. If I run into a situation where I have to pause play, I'll just leave the game going and will wait for feedback, but otherwise, I'll be playing through the turns slowly and methodically, as now is the time where we need to optimize growth vs Scientist Specialists.

After Scientific Method comes in, it becomes less of a chore to optimize things, but until then, there's still a lot of work left to do on each turn. Plus, I still have to make myself some breakfast in between, etc.

 

[BLubmuz]

Alright, just be sure to watch the AI learning Paper > Edu

Have a nice breakfast, good luck!

 

[Dhoomstriker]

T250 (1050 AD) - T258 (1130 AD) Partial Turnset Report

T250 (1050 AD)
Most Scientists are fired in favour of working Food-based squares, as per the plan

T251 (1060 AD)
The Most Powerful Civs in the World are:
Toku
Justinian
Saladin
Mehmed
Fifth Element
Isabella
Zara

Zara will trade Open Borders but we don't need them, so I don't trade for them.

A Great Artist is born in Delhi.

The Pig deal with Zara can be renegotiated on this turn, so I do so (I'll have to remember to do that again on T261).

T252 (1070 AD)
5 of our Cities grow on this turn.

We spot the Barb City's City Centre square and it is NOT located on a Fur Resource, like in our test saved game.

Spoiler :

T253 (1080 AD)
Mehmed makes peace with Isabella. It appears that he got Theology in the peace deal.

Confucianism has spread in Madrid. There's no going back now! 3 Religions for her it will be!

Jusinian is the first to Divine Right and thus he founds Islam.

We finish the 2 Forest Chops into Crabs' Forge.

T254 (1090 AD)
Justinian gets a Great Merchant. No, he does not yet know Economics--that's the effect of The Colossus.

Isabella has learned Engineering, presumably through self-research.

Zara will now go to war with Mehmed again.

The choices are:
War with Mehmed + Horseback Riding for Optics + 195 Gold
OR
War with Mehmed + Horseback Riding + 130 Gold for Philosophy

Note that Zara has 170 Gold in total. Therefore, both deals are "fair trade" deals.

I choose to give him the Philosophy trade, as he's not going to be the first to Liberalism and I'd rather have the Gold to fund our research.

No one is complaining about WFYABTA, at least not yet.

We Chop a Forest into Grt Person Farm's Courthouse and it will be completed next turn.

We get a look at a bit more of Mehmed's lands, thanks to a Confucian Missionary. It appears that he captured a City called Toledo from Isabella at some point, since that's the name of a Spanish City.

Spoiler :

T256 (1110 AD)
Saladin has begun to spread Buddhism to us, starting with Sugar Daddy. Let's hope that he doesn't also spread it to Zara later on.

Zara learns Divine Right (too late for you, no Holy City for you, buddy!). Well, unless or until we gift Riverdale to you...

Zara will trade Divine Right for Paper, Optics, and some of our Gold. I am not at all interested in the trade and do not make the trade.

We manage to get our Crab back from Saladin and he's more reasonable this time, offering a Gold Resource for our Fish.

Three Clams starts to use up its stored-up Food in our Foodbox so that it can generate the next Great Person. If we want 2 more Great People here, we'll have to spawn one here as our next Great Person.

T257 (1120 AD)
The Observatory in Delhi is complete.

Saladin learns Paper!

Saladin and Zara have traded... Zara picks up Music and Saladin picks up Divine Right.

Confucianism has spread in Seville, the second City of Isabella's to have Confucianism.

T258 (1130 AD)
Grt Person Farm wants to build a Market. For "good luck," I say yes, then remove the item from the build queue.

We have reached 10 Million Souls in our empire. We have 22.28% of the World's Population while Toku only has 20.00%. Thus, we are now the LARGEST CIV population-wise in the game.

Toku gets a Great Prophet.

Justinian has completed Angkor Wat. We'll get 385 Gold for our efforts in building it, next turn.

Toku stops treating Zara as his Worst Enemy!!! This fact means that Riverdale can be gifted without needing a war with Zara.

Justinian has learned Music and Guilds. I'm guessing that he self-teched Guilds and used his cash to buy the remainder of Music that he'd probably almost won the Great Artist race on earlier in the game, since I don't see how he could have been trading techs for these techs.

I stop play here because it's taken me forever and because I think that it is time to spawn our Golden Age!

6 of our Cities just grew, so it would be a great time to start a Golden Age and switch back to working Scientists.

Spoiler :

Here's the Diplo Situation:

Spoiler :

 

[Mitchum]

Great job. I look forward to the screen shots. Hopefully, we'll be able to fill in any gaps so that you can continue playing your turnset later today.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Presumably, the next 2 Great People will come from Three Clams and then Grt Person Farm, since if I were to hire a ton of Scientists in Grt Person Farm now, it would actually beat out Three Clams. I probably don't want to delay Grt Person Farm producing a Great Person for much longer, though, if we want to get 2 more Great People out of this City.

After that, Delhi may be the next one, but I'm not certain... I may have to hire less Scientists in Delhi if we want either Risaia or Crabs to beat it, but again that's just a guess.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

We also don't want to trade Paper around, do we?

What if another AI learns it? Should we trade it then?

Or, since Paper is such a cheap tech, we'll just "take a loss" by not being the ones to trade it around, in hopes of delaying the AIs as much as possible from getting to Liberalism?

 

[Mitchum]

Presumably, the next 2 Great People will come from Three Clams and then Grt Person Farm, since if I were to hire a ton of Scientists in Grt Person Farm now, it would actually beat out Three Clams. I probably don't want to delay Grt Person Farm producing a Great Person for much longer, though, if we want to get 2 more Great People out of this City.

After that, Delhi may be the next one, but I'm not certain... I may have to hire less Scientists in Delhi if we want either Risaia or Crabs to beat it, but again that's just a guess.

There should be no need to delay a GP from GP Farm at this time. The time to delay GP generation to squeeze out a great person from an auxilliary city will come later in the game.

We should, however, push to have our next few great people come from cities with high odds for a GS, which leaves Delhi out.

 

[Mitchum]

We also don't want to trade Paper around, do we?

What if another AI learns it? Should we trade it then?

Or, since Paper is such a cheap tech, we'll just "take a loss" by not being the ones to trade it around, in hopes of delaying the AIs as much as possible from getting to Liberalism?

I think we should only trade paper once one or two more AI learn it. As you said, it's a cheap tech and really isn't worth much. I would much rather keep the other AI from getting it as long as possible so that we can push to get the best tech possible from Liberalism.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

There should be no need to delay a GP from GP Farm at this time. The time to delay GP generation to squeeze out a great person from an auxilliary city will come later in the game.

We should, however, push to have our next few great people come from cities with high odds for a GS, which leaves Delhi out.

Well, it won't be much of a delay. It just means that Grt Person Farm won't immediately switch from GIrr squares to full Scientists for an extra 2 or 3 turns.

If our plan is for:
1. Three Clams, Grt Person Farm, and Delhi to each spawn as many as 2 more Great People
2. Risaia and Crabs to each spawn as many as 1 more Great Person

Then, when considering all of the Cities that still need to generate 2 Great People, it would make sense to generate the first one in the City with the least Food surplus first. That would be Three Clams. As I said, all that it would mean is that Grt Person Farm would wait 2 to 3 turns before going "hardcore" into Great Person production mode, even being able to "make up" for those turns of delay by reducing its Foodbox to almost nothing during the Golden Age period.

So, in Grt Person Farm, it's just trading a few turns of working high-Food squares now for a few more Specialists-at-a-time after a couple of turns.


I won't delay the Great Person in Grt Person Farm any longer, though, which means that it might not be until after the Golden Age expires that we can generate a 3rd Great Person.

Given this potentially-pessimistic view of how well Risaia and Crabs can perform, we'll end up with a maximum of 4 Great Scientists by the end of my turnset.

So, Physics is a "lock." We'll just be needing to choose between Electricity and Radio, based on how quickly Saladin techs to Education.

Other factors include getting a Great Scientist from learning Physics itself, plus needing to spend at least a turn on Liberalism (possibly longer if I'm not running at a 100% Science Rate).

 

[Dhoomstriker]

I think we should only trade paper once one or two more AI learn it. As you said, it's a cheap tech and really isn't worth much. I would much rather keep the other AI from getting it as long as possible so that we can push to get the best tech possible from Liberalism.

What about other trades? Presumably, we'll hang onto Education and Liberalism for as long as possible.

But, what about Printing Press? Should we maybe hold onto our Monopoly and only trade it if an AI learns it?

Should we consider trading it away if we can get, say, Nationalism from one AI and maybe Guilds from another AI?

Saladin has a lot of Cottages, so his Research Rate would increase if he learned Printing Press, but he's also a Protective AI, so he's bound to chase after this tech himself eventually, on his way to Rifling.


Religion Switching?
Are we cool with switching into Buddhism as soon as we pick up Scientific Method in a couple of turns?

The only non-Buddhist Cities are Riverdale and Ivory Towers, and there is no chance of generating a Great Person in either. Neither City will need the +1 Happiness for having the State Religion.

Yes, those Cities won't get the Theocracy bonus on units, but I think that the positive Diplo relations with the western AIs will be far more important, right?

We also should be safe from Zara backstabbing us once we switch out of Confucianism, now that he's:
1. At war with Mehmed
AND
2. We have a Longbowman and Spearman in our two border Cities
AND
3. We're actually building Military units in our other Cities


He right now has Divine Right and Music up for trade. We could CONSIDER the idea of trading for Divine Right and then using Divine Right to get Music from Toku, since Zara will only trade us Divine Right while he's Friendly with us.

However, for that trade to happen, we'd either have to give up Paper (which we agreed that I will not do) or wait for Zara to learn Paper and then give up a tech like Printing Press to him for Divine Right (he might even give us Music at the same time, as well). Presumably, I'd only make this trade if I could first get Nationalism for Printing Press (plus maybe some Gold?) as a trade from another AI, but for now, only Saladin knows Nationalism.

Perhaps we are just better off waiting on these kinds of trades until more AIs know the techs, and can forget about using Zara's "Friendly" status to trade techs, but I thought that I would run the idea by you guys, so that if the opportunity does arise, I'll have the approval or disapproval in regards to the possibility of trading with him before switching into Buddhism.

 

[Dhoomstriker]

To summarize, we saw this amount of growth in our Cities so far in this turnset:
Delhi: 14 -> 17
Silverado: 9 -> 11
Riverdale: 11 -> 12 (I have one PRiv Farmed and the GH has a Windmill. Note that if we chop the Forest by Whales without settling Whales until afterwards, we'll get a bit more of a Hammer boost into The UN.)
Bedrock: 9 -> 11
Wheaties: 7 -> 9
Grt Person Farm: 10 -> 13
Risaia: 7 -> 10
Crabs: 8 -> 11
Three Clams: 10 -> 11
Sugar Daddy: Stayed at Size 6
Goldfish: Stayed at Size 4
Ivory Towers: 7 -> 9
Mystic: 7 -> 9

 

[Mitchum]

I think all of your suggestions looks good regarding trades. Let's hold on to Paper for now.

Sure, switch to Buddhism. We need to get more friendly with our religious group.

Maybe you should hold off on the golden age until after you've delayed the great person in GP Farm 2 or 3 turns. That way, all cities will be in full GPP mode during the entire golden age.

When do you plan to run Theocracy?

Do you plan to play more today?

 

[Dhoomstriker]

Sure, switch to Buddhism. We need to get more friendly with our religious group.

Once we've learned Scientific Method, the loss of switching will be a lot smaller, so that'll be the target date to switch.

Maybe you should hold off on the golden age until after you've delayed the great person in GP Farm 2 or 3 turns. That way, all cities will be in full GPP mode during the entire golden age.

When do you plan to run Theocracy?

I would really like to do a GPP spreadsheet. I think that one is warranted.

Just from gut instinct alone, I don't think that Three Clams will be able to generate 2 more Great People, but I'd like to do the math on it.

In fact, we might not even run a Golden Age if the math doesn't show it to be valuable enough, which would mean that we'd have a Great Person NOW instead of potentially another one or more LATER.

And we'll be able to determine when the right time to switch into Theocracy will be, with and without a Golden Age, by doing a spreadsheet.

It's worth stopping to do the math. We need to make sure that we generate our Great People in the right City order and that we only use up our Great Artist on a Golden Age if we can prove that doing so will net us at least 2 Great People before the end of the game that we otherwise would not have.

Do you plan to play more today?

I'd like to, but until we've got a solid math-based plan for the Great Person generation, I don't want to rush things. I'll try and work up a spreadsheet, but I'm new to doing so.